History of Ashtabula County, Ohio, Part 28

Author: Williams, W. W. (William W.)
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Philadelphia : Williams brothers
Number of Pages: 458

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In congress the issue was now elearly defined. The south declared the insti- tution of slavery to be holy, and insisted that it should be extended and made co- extensive with the bounds of the republic; while the north declared the institu- tion to he inhuman and a relic of barbarism, and insisted that it should be limited to the territory it then occupied. A southern senator had declared that he would eall the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill monument, and that threat had met with defianee from northern men.

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was the torch that lighted the pile. It raised the tempest that culminated in the Rebellion. There were but few men from the north in the senate who had the courage to speak out holdly on that

HISTORY OF ASHTABULA COUNTY, OHIO.

question, but Mr. Wade was conspicuous among that number. Events followed of a startling character. The old land-mark of peace was obliterated. Then came the border ruffians, asking for the admission of Kansas as a slave State. Douglas, Broderick, and a few other Democrats bceame alarmed, and a sense of common danger drove them to take counsel with some of the most extreme radicals. Of all men in the senate, Mr. Wade was most feared, trusted, and respected by his political opponents. He was a plain, blunt man, like Marc Antony, and spoke right on. He had none of the graces of oratory ; what he said was clear, simple, and direct. In a single sentence he would sometimes annihilate an opponent. An instance of this occurred in the debate on the Kansas-Nebraska question, when Mr. Badger, of North Carolina, appealed to the senate in a sentimental way. " What!" said he, " will you not allow me to take my old mammy with me to Kansas; she on whose breast my infancy was cradled; who watched over my childhood and takes pride in my manhood ?" " Yes," said Mr. Wade, " we will permit you to take your old mammy to Kansas, but we will prohibit you, by law, from selling her after you get her there." Mr. Badger was extinguished. That argument admitted of no reply. Badger was afterwards hcard to say that Wade was the only man he could never get even with. In the same debate, a New Hampshire senator was making a speech subservient to the ideas of southern gen- tlemen. Mr. Wade was listening attentively to him, when he suddenly turned and said he would like to put a question to the senator from Ohio. " Would he recog- nize his obligations and perform his duty in executing the fugitive slave law ?" Mr. Wade rose, and, in language more emphatic than reverent or parliamentary, responded, " No, sir ; I'd see 'em damned first." And he immediately returned the question, but before the New Hampshire senator had completed his argumentative reply, Mr. Wade turned to the Kentucky senators and put the same question to them. The response came quickly, "No, sir; there is no occasion for it so long as we have men like the honorable senator from New Hampshire to do it for us." Nothing could have been more humiliating to the New Hampshire senator.

During those years the greatest excitement prevailed in congress, as well as the country, and scenes of violence were rife on every hand. The code of honor was prevalent at the south, while at the north it was condemned by publie sentiment. The result was that the conduct of many southern men became overbearing and insolent. Challenges could be given with impunity, as it was known that no chal- lenge could be accepted by a northern man without incurring social and political ostracism among his own people. At this time a few men in congress, among whom were Wade, Chandler, Broderick, Douglas, and Cameron, of the senate, and Burlingame, Potter, and others of the house, agreed that they would submit to no further insolence, and that they would accept the first challenge given by any southern member of congress. That if assailed in words they would resent the insult in words, and if challenged they would fight. In the session of 1856, Mr. Sumner spoke in the senate on the " barbarism of slavery." The next day he was stricken down in the senate chamber by Preston S. Brooks, of South Caro- lina. Senator Toombs, of Georgia, declared that he witnessed the assault, and declared his approbation of the deed. He said, " It was nothing more than the senator from Massachusetts richly deserved ; he had played the part of a dog, and he merited the treatment of a dog." Mr. Wade, in response to Toombs, said, " Those are the sentiments of a coward and an assassin." A duel was expected as the result, and Mr. Wade made his arrangements accordingly. Colonel James Watson Webb, who before that time had some experience in dueling, volun- teered to act on his behalf. Inquiries were made whether a challenge would be accepted ; but no challenge came, and on the morning of the fourth day Toombs approached Wade cheerfully, and said, " What is the use of a man's making a damned fool of himself?" "There isn't much," replied Wade, " but some men can't help it." So ended the expected duel, to the chagrin of many of the southern members.

Some little time afterwards there was renewed excitement in the chamber. The Democrats were resorting to all manner of dilatory movements, when Senator Toombs arose and launched out into a most violent denunciation of the north and northern men, and especially northern members of congress. He was just in the height of his declamation, when Mr. Wade arose, and demanded to know if he · was included in the invective ? Mr. Toombs was suddenly brought to his senses, and replied, " No; he excepted the senator from Ohio," and then went off into a glowing panegyric of Mr. Wade. Another instance of Mr. Wade's vindication of justice, and of his bold and decided character, eame out in a passage which occurred between the Hon. John M. Clayton and himself during the existence of the American or Know-Nothing party, the purposes of which Mr. Clayton reviewed in an elaborate speech in the senate. Senator Wade was deeply inter- ested in the passage of the " Homestead bill," and upon this bill he stood side by side with Senator Dodge, a Democratie senator from Iowa. He brought all his influence to bear upon the success of the measure, and had delivered a pow- erful argument in favor of the bill, setting forth the advantages to the country,

the pioneer, and the emigrant. Mr. Clayton followed, commenting upon the speech in a frank but friendly spirit, to which Mr. Wade took no exceptions. The speeches were supposed to be printed in the Congressional Globe as they had been delivered in the senate. Mr. Wade took no pains to revise or prepare his specches for publication, but trusted that work entirely to the reporter, and had not looked to see that those speeches were correctly reported. A few days afterwards, Mr. Dodge came to him and asked him if he had scen Senator Clayton's reply to his speech on the Homestead bill, as printed in the Globe, saying, " You ought to take notice of it, as he has ascribed sentiments to you which I am sure you never held, and has put language into your mouth which you never uttered." On looking into the Globe the representations were found to be true, and Mr. Wade lost no time in calling to it the attention of the senate and the public. He was willing to suppose that the senator from Delaware had, through mistake or inadvertenee, attributed to him opinions and expressions which would be of- fensive to his constituents and the country. He had satisfied himself that the reporter of the senate had faithfully transcribed his language, and he could not account for the course the senator from Delaware had pursucd. Mr. Clayton in- terrupted with the remark, accompanied by a malicious glance, " When the senator gets through I will give my version of the matter." Mr. Wade concluded by saying, " It is therefore a mistake or something worse." Mr. Clayton followed in a lofty, justifying strain, in which he borc down severely on Mr. Wade, and took his seat, leaving the impression on every mind that he had made no mistake, and that his review of the speech of the senator from Ohio was exactly right. Then Mr. Wade, rising to his feet, and with a deliberate manner, and looking Clayton full in the face, declarcd, " You, sir, sneakcd into your office and wrote what you knew to be false." This was the signal for the intervention of the presiding offieer, and the matter was at once dropped in the chamber, but of course it was anticipated that Mr. Clayton, as a southern man, would not let the matter rest. That evening Senator Pratt, of Maryland, acting as the friend of Mr. Clayton, called on Mr. Wade at his lodgings to inquire on behalf of the senator from Delaware if Mr. Wade was a fighting man,-if he recognized the code? Free from the restraint of parliamentary rules and the decorum of the senate, Mr. Wade replied, " Go tell the scoundrel if he is tired of life and wants to know my views of dueling, he ean find out by sending the communication in the usual form." Senator Pratt remonstrated upon the severity of this reply, and tried to have him soften it. " I do not desire to have you act in the matter," said Mr. Wade, " but if you tell him anything you will give him my answer un- modified." The following morning they met, and Senator Wade was first to speak. " Well, senator, what next ?" " Nothing, nothing at all," said Senator Pratt; " he is a damned old coward." There was no further intercourse between Messrs. Clayton and Wade for the remainder of the senatorial term. When within a few days of its close, and Mr. Clayton was to retire to private life, he one day came to Senator Wade, his eyes filled with tears, and his voice trembling with emotion, and said, " Senator, that affair which has so long interrupted our friendship, has cost me more trouble of mind than almost any other of my life. I feel that I have done you injustice, and that I ought to rectify it here in the senate, before I leave it forever. I will do so in any manner you may suggest." And the brave heart, so quick to vindicate wounded honor, melted immediately with kind ness. " No," said he: " Mr. Clayton, it would have gratified me in the day of it; but it has long gone by, the circumstance is forgotten ; to revive it now will only open to the public an old wound which they think nothing of. It will be up-hill business to do it now. Let it rest in oblivion where we have consigned it." They grasped hands. Such was the magnanimity which covered the fault of a fellow-man.

These qualities of mind and heart made him respected even by his most violent political opponents in the senate far more than many a northern doughface, whose subserviency they both employed and despiscd. After these occurrences they were really better friends than if he had truckled to their dictation, or failed to show that he would brook no insolence and hold no malice. In truth, it became quite customary for gentlemen from the south to pay him public com- pliments, and the matter went so far that one day when Senator Mason had been saying some very nice things of him, he, with some pleasantry, repelled the praise, responding to the senator from Virginia, "Sir, if you do not stop saying these things of me it will ruin me at home." It became quite common with some of the southern members of congress to affeet great independence of northern mar- kets and manufactures by wearing what they called home-made clothing. In this matter Senator Mason, of Virginia, was quite conspicuous. He appeared one day in the senate chamber clad from top to toe in a genuine suit of Virginia gray. Wade aceosted him. "Well, senator, you are well dressed to-day," at the same time closely inspecting his dress. " Yes," said Mason, " I mean to do justice by the south, and by my own State in particular. We will show that we are not dependent upon the north for a shred of anything." Wade, looking full of

HISTORY OF ASHTABULA COUNTY, OHIO.

mischief, stopped up closer, and, taking hold of a button on Mason's coat, said, " Of course you will do that. In what part of the south did you obtain these buttons?" They were, in fact, made in Connecticut, and Mason's face fell us he growled out, " Nobody but a damned Yankee would have found that out." Senator Evans, of South Carolina, a very bigoted and precise man, once came into the senate cham- ber, and, taking his seat, lifted up a copy of the Anti-Slavery Standard, which some one had placed there in his absence, and then, turning to Mr. Wade, who was standing by, observed, " Who could have put this vile thing upon my desk ?" " Why," said Wade, " it is a most excellent family paper." " Ugh !" said Evans, " I would no sooner touch it than I would touch a toad." At this Wade laughed heartily, and left the ohl gentleman in his tribulation. On another occasion, at the very close of the session, Mr. Evans was in trouble about some bill, of no general importance, but in which quite a number of his constituents were inter- ested. He had been trying all winter to get it passed ; but a few hours of the session remained, and his anxiety was intensified. It was late at night ; Senator Foote, of Vermont, was nodding in the chair. The senate had been in continuous session for two days and nights. Probably not a quorum was present or could have been found. Some were absent, some in the ante-rooms, eating or sleeping ; only a few who could get the floor were attending to business. In his distress he came across the chamber to Mr. Wade, on the radical side of the hall, a thing he seldom did, and which was almost as offensive to him as the innocent paper he had found on his desk, and said, " Here, sir, I have been all winter trying to get a bill through in which some five hundred of my old neighbors are interested, and the time is rapidly passing. What can I do?" "My friend," said the senator, " jump right up now, interrupt the proceedings, call up your bill ; now is the very time. I will help you." Evans went back to his seat and commenced fumbling about for a copy of his bill, somewhat dazed at the sudden suggestion of his counselor, when Wade was on his feet and called out, " Mr. President, the senator from South Carolina, Mr. Evans, has a bill of a private nature which has been pending for a long time ; he is anxious it should pass. I move the rules be suspended for that purpose. It will take but a moment." No one objected ; Mr. Evans was recognized almost before he was aware of it. His bill was passed, much to his delight. " I declare," said he, " nobody but a Yankee would have gone to work in that way." This was the southern fashion in those days; they spoke of all northern people as Yankees. Such promptness of action and readi- ness in expedients were always characteristic of him, at the bar as well as in legislative halls.

Captain M. H. Simonds commanded a company in Colonel Ball's regiment of cavalry in the Mexican war. He died in the service, leaving three horses and a full outfit for the campaign. The major of the regiment, as his duty required, took possession of the property and converted it to cash. The major also died in the service, never having accounted for the property, and leaving his estate insolvent. The mother of Captain Simonds, who was a widow, applied to the departments at Washington for compensation, but the elaim was rejected on the ground that the loss arose from the failure of the major to discharge his duty in accounting for the property, and the government does not hold itself responsible for the failure of its agents. The equity of the case seemed so strong that she appealed to eon- gress for relief, and the application was placed in the hands of Senator Wade. The bill passed the senate promptly, but the committee on pensions, to which the bill was referred in the house of representatives, rejected the claim for the same reason urged against it by the departments. At the next session of congress the bill was again passed through the senate, went to the house, and was again re- ferred to the committee on pensions, and the committee reported against the elaim as before. Mr. Wade labored with the chairman of the committee, and urged the equity of the claim, but he was deaf to all entreaties, and assured Mr. Wade that he should not permit the bill to pass, under any circumstances, as he should regard its passage as a dangerous precedent. Some few days after, Mr. Wade went into the house of representatives and found the house engaged in passing private bills, and he observed that the chairman of the committee on pensions was absent. He went to the seat of Mr. Morgan, of New York, and told him the nature and merits of the claim and the difficulties attending its passage. Mr. Morgan ex- pressed his desire to aid him, but feared that nothing could be done; that it could not be carried over an adverse report of the committee. " Why," said Mr. Wade, " don't you see that they are now taking up the reports of committees and passing the bills without objection ?" " Yes," said Morgan, " but in those cases the reports are all in favor of the claims, and in this case the report, you see, is against the claim." " But," said Wade, "you can move to take up the report and put the bill on its passage withont mentioning the fact that the report is adverse." Mor- gan consented to try the experiment. The motion prevailed, and the bill passed without objection. Thus an equitable elaimu triumphed over technical objections.

In September, 1860, Senator Broderick, of California, fell in a duel. Mr. Wade held that gentleman in high estimation, and regarded him as one of the

most reliable men in the senate on the subject of northern rights, which were then imperiled. And the circumstances regarding his death were such that Mr. Wade regarded him as a martyr to the cause of freedom. The following expres- sion of his estimate of the character of Senator Broderick, as made in the senate, is quoted here because of the striking similarity of character between the fallen senator, as described by Mr. Wade, and his distinguished eulogist : " MIr. Presi- dent, though not of the same political party, I cannot suffer this occasion to pass without expressing mny deep sense of the noble qualities and manly character of David C. Broderick. It was my good fortune to become well acquainted with him soon after he took his seat in this body. He was unassuming in manner, but frank, outspoken, and sincere, despising all intrigue and indirection. He was possessed of an excellent understanding and a fine capacity for business. Ilis love of justice was remarkable. Having once determined and settled in his own mind what was right, he was as immovable as the hills. Neither the threats or blandish- ments of power nor personal peril could move him from his purpose. Being of the people, their rights, interests, and their advancement was the polar star of his action. For these he was at all times ready to labor, and, if need be, to die. In short, he was the very soul of honor, without fear and without reproach. The loss of such a man, Mr. President, is indeed a public calamity."

Buchanan's administration had been as weak and imbeeile as it was possible to be, and events were culminating rapidly. The Republican party had been forced into existence by the very necessity of the time. The presidential canvass of 1860 had resulted in the election of Mr. Lincoln, and the time intervening be- tween November and the ensuing March, when he was to be inaugurated, was used by southern members of congress to promote the project of secession, and to plunge the country into civil war. It was a period of the utmost uncertainty and anxiety, when men's hearts failed them for fear, and when many who had been resolute on the slavery question were trembling, vacillating, and ready to give everything to the demands of the south. Mr. Wade was one of the few men who never flinched. He looked the question squarely in the face, and acted in that great emergency with a coolness and deliberation which now seem surpri- sing. He was one of the famous joint committee of thirteen to take into eonsid- eration the last peace resolutions ever offered in congress for the conciliation of the two sections,-the resolutions presented by Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky. His associates on that committee from the senate were Messrs. Davis, Mason, Toombs, and Benjamin. In the consultations of this committee every inducement brought to bear on Mr. Wade to make him swerve one hair's breadth from the line of his convictions proved utterly futile. He told Mr. Davis, who was the acknowledged leader of the southern men in congress, that he was convinced that

while the south professed to desire peace, that she meant war; that the resolu- tions, however well designed by their author, were only a delusion and a snare; that the north would not accept them, and even if she did, it would not satisfy the augmenting demands of the south. " Well," said Jefferson Davis, " if war comes it will not be on our section on which it will spend its force." He had good reason for saying this, for the opposition journals of the north were teeming with declarations that if the black Republicans adopted any measures of coercion to prevent secession they would first have to encounter opposition at home, and to walk over the dead bodies of countless Democrats, who would not, in such a erisis, abandon the cause of their southern brethren. But the reply of Mr. Wade showed how well he understood the situation, how clearly he saw the real heart of his countrymen through the mist and darkness of that perilous hour. " I know," said he, " what the city of New York has done; I know the resolutions which have just been passed by two hundred thousand Democrats in Ohio, and I know what has been done in Indiana ; and let them carry out the doctrine and purpose of their resolutions who ean. But the first gun that is fired will secure emauci- pation, and the Democrats will desert you. They are now leading you into a trap, and, like the devil, they will leave you there to get out the best way you can." The consultations of the committee failed ; the counsels of the great peace con- vention, held at Washington about the same time, failed. Everything failed which even looked towards peace. The tide of alienation was sweeping all before it. The Republican members of congress, giving themselves up to the drifting current of events, sat silent while the torrent of speech-making was flowing from southern lips. At length Mr. Wade got the floor for the ensuing Monday ; meantime Mr. Douglas came to him and said, " I want to make a speech. It shall be strong anti-slavery. There is no use talking longer for peace. I will make the speech on Monday if you will yield me the floor." To this Mr. Wade assented, and Douglas kept his mind until Sunday night, aud then gave up his purpose. It was just as well. Mr. Wade occupied the floor on that signal Mon- day. He did not speak very long, but long enough to exhibit the real situation. Ilis words were blunt and plain. He closed by saying, " You have made your- selves believe that you can whip the north. If, however, you should make a little mistake here, you will be in hell!" He afterwards remarked that Stephens,

F. M. GILBERT, DEL.

RESIDENCE OF HON. BENJAMIN F. WADE, JEFFERSON, OHIO

HISTORY OF ASHTABULA COUNTY, OHIO.

of Georgia, had told them the same thing. That speech had a vast influence. From that time forward there was little talk of peace. The southern States, led on by South Carolina, began to take measures and pass ordinances of secession. The southern members of congress began to make farewell specches, and to vacate their seats in the capitol.

The 4th of March arrived. Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated in a scene of the greatest excitement and apprehension; and old President Buchanan was relieved, at once and forever, of the burden of a position where he had been sitting for the last three months of his term crying and wringing his hands and sobbing out his broken and incoherent and despairing conversations with his visitors, " I have been the last President of the United States." Fort Sumter was attacked on the 12th of April, 1861. Congress had done its work and gone. The new congress was summoned to meet on the 4th of July of the same year. Senator Wade was early recognized as one of the few spirits who had the nerve to meet the great emergency. He was the chairman of the joint committee on the conduct of the war, and held this position during the whole of that bloody struggle which followed. He was up carly and late; he did an immense amount of business, visiting the different sections of the country and the armies in the field, and making reports, from time to time, on the progress of the strife, the subjects of which now fill eight large volumes, containing some of the most thrill- ing passages in the history of the war. It was towards the close of Mr. Lincoln's first term that the brilliant success in the southwest, which re-opened Louisiana to the Federal jurisdiction, induced him to propose a line of policy for the restoration of the recusant States that would have left the whole subject of emancipation in a very precarious condition. Senator Wade, who was then chairman of the com- mittee on Territories in the senate, and Henry Winter Davis, who was chairman of the committee on Territories in the house of representatives, were the only men who stood up openly opposed to this policy. The subject came up just at the close of the session, which gave them no opportunity to present the question fairly before congress. They therefore prepared a powerful manifesto against the proposal of the President, signed it, and sent it to the New York Tribune for publication. Tried and pronounced against slavery, in all its forms, as were the conductors of that paper, they refused to publish the document; but it was issued in the form of a circular, and effectually did the work : the scheme was abandoned. This was done, not out of opposition to Mr. Lincoln, but because they saw more clearly than he seemed to see, the pernicious tendency of his policy ; they stood by him notwithstanding. He was chosen for a second term, and at last the fearful struggle was ended. In his rejoicing over the result, Mr. Lincoln was about again to yield to the weakness of excessive kindness. He actually went down to Richmond, after its occupation by our troops, and gave a private order to General Heintzleman, then in command in that city, to convene the old Con- federate Virginia State legislature, and to clothe them with all the authority they possessed as a legislative body before the act of secession. Then it was that Senator Wade again remonstrated and brought down upon himself much ignorant and ill-timed censure of the press. But the result showed him to be right in this, as he was in his joint action with Mr. Davis before. A commission of military men was formed to examine the action of the officer in charge at Rich- mond. When asked upon what authority he had convoked the rebel legislature, he quietly drew forth an order in the handwriting of Abraham Lincoln, bearing a foot-note which read, " Show this to no one but Judge John A. Campbell," who was still in Richmond, having been a member of the rebel cabinet. But in the midst of these rapid and marvelous events President Lincoln was shot down. The nation and the world were shocked by the murderous deed. The whole order of things was changed by the elevation of Andrew Johnson to the presidential chair. Johnson proved false to the Republican party and to the interests of the nation. Mr. Wade was now regarded as the head of the Republican party in the senate. He was made president pro tem. of the senate, and became vice- president in fact. The impeachment trial of Johnson followed, and he was acquitted by one vote. Had that trial resulted differently, Mr. Wade would have succeeded Johnson in the presidential chair. In 1869, Mr. Wade retired from the senate, and up to the time of his death remained much in private life, occa- sionally, however, engaged in professional affairs, which required his attendance at Washington during most of the sessions of congress. When, however, the excitement arose on the Saint Domingo question, President Grant appointed him chairman of the commission to visit Saint Domingo. The expedition was successfully accomplished, and a report was made which sustained the views of the President and his action in relation thereto.

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History of Ashtabula County, Ohio, Part 28

Author: Williams, W. W. (William W.) Publication date: 1878 Publisher: Philadelphia : Williams brothers Number of Pages: 458

Author: Williams, W. W. (William W.)
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Philadelphia : Williams brothers
Number of Pages: 458